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Copycat Brothers – respected in IT world
By acca | October 4, 2007
Three German brothers, Alexandar (36 years old), Oliver (34) and Mark (32) Samwer are not shy because they are copycats. On contrary, they earned a lot of money on that, fully legally.
All started back in spring, 1998. Oliver studied management in Germany, and when he had to work on his dissertation, he decided to do some research in USA. Precisely, in well known Silicon Valley. He went there with his friend and started interview hundreds of entrepreneurs and investment bankers. When finished that, he went back to Germany and finished his dissertation. He and his brothers, wrote hundreds of letters to different companies in United States, offer them to work for them for small money. They wanted experience. Three brothers went to America and started work for three companies in different stages of growth. Oliver worked in developed Inktomi, Mark in middle size company Visto and Alexander in new firm – Sentient Networks. Their goal was to learn how your firm can grow from start to big successful company. In December 1998, they went back to Germany and next month they started Alando.de – German version of Ebay. They couldn’t work with credit cards but they implemented debit card option on their auction website. Debit cards are very popular in Germany, by the way. Alando developed very well and fast and five months later brothers get offer from Ebay. Ebay bought their site for 50 million dollars.
When Facebook started, Samwer brothers noticed idea is excellent and that internet users like it. They started German version – StudiVZ. They knew difference between American and German students. Students in Germany live in their homes until 20-something years old. And they concentrate on social and friends links instead university links between students. In two years, site earned them more than $100 millions before they sold it to Holtzbrinck company.
Twitter website was almost exact copy and just translated into German version – Frazr.
So, they copied or just borrow idea from growing US website and adapted to Germany internet users. later, brothers started with some other kind of business investments. Not just websites. Jamba is company they founded and which developes entertainment software for mobile phones. In 2004, they sold it to VeriSign for $273 millions.
Now, they run 300 million dollars European Founders Fund. Fund helps sturtups, website owners with good ideas and vision. Fund invests money in projects that have oposite direction brothers had when they started, too. Europen idea copied and adapted to US internet users. EFF is now spread all over the world. USA, Europe, Asia, there are investors and sturtup makers on all meridians.
